Essential Guide to E-mail Marketing - Haymarket

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C M Y CM MY CY CMY K dmnews_abandoner.pdf 10/1/07 4:31:37 PM H H The Abandoner dpPD dpPD She’s crafty and she’s smart. Just when you think you’ve got her…she slips away. She revels in her freedom of choice, yet with so many options available, she finds it increasingly difficult to commit. Despite her challenging behavior, Cheetahmail sees her long term potential. View every email and web page as an opportunity to build a relationship with her. Be relevant to her and she will become one of your most loyal and profitable customers. CheetahMail’s email marketing, web analytics and database marketing solutions help the world’s most recognizable brands build increased relevance, loyalty and value with all of their customer types. Visit www.CheetahMail.com and enter promo code BeRelevant in the registration form to receive your free copy of Jupiter’s latest research report Integrated Marketing: The Evolving Role of E-mail Marketing. SM Be Relevant SM 29 Broadway | New York, NY 10006 TEL: 800.396.5709 | info@cheetahmail.com H H H H H H

32 INFRASTRUCTURE DM News • E-Mail Marketing Guide 2007 Spam finally has a definition BY JORDAN COHEN When industry groups first started tackling deliverability best practices a few years ago, the struggle to define spam raised some controversial questions. Marketers, ISPs, consumer groups and government agencies alike wondered: Should all unsolicited commercial e-mail be considered spam? Or just unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail? Or perhaps it’s any e-mail sent without permission; bulk, commercial or otherwise? Eventually, attempts to define spam were abandoned, as no one could agree on a meaning that would encompass all unwanted messages while excluding legitimate e-mail. Besides, a definition seemed irrelevant when an estimated one-in-five commercial e-mails were getting caught in filters for failing content checks or poor bounce management, even when specifically requested by the consumer. Fast forward to 2007, and we may finally have a definition for spam. Yahoo’s top e-mail operations executive, Miles Libbey, senior product manager at Yahoo Mail, probably put it best at the Federal Trade Commission’s recent Spam Summit: “Operationally, we define spam as anything users don’t want in their inbox,” Libbey said. It’s short, sweet, highly understandable and 100 percent consumer-centric. But it’s also a definition that may frighten the many marketers who previously believed that acquiring affirmative consent meant they would never be considered spammers. As we move closer to a time when consumer spam complaints will weigh heaviest on a marketers’ deliverability and ROI, successful firms will increase their focus on making sure that every e-mail they send is relevant, valuable, welcomed and wanted by its recipients. To survive and thrive in the next phase of e-mail marketing, keep these two core principles in mind: ■ How you give notice trumps how you get permission. Getting consumers’ permission is meaningless unless you are clear about what they are agreeing to when they sign up. At a recent industry conference, AOL’s postmaster, Charles Stiles, told attendees, “I don’t care if they triple opted-in and gave you their credit card number.” He drew chuckles, but made his point loud and clear: Opt-in is meaningless if consumers subsequently click the “Report Spam” button. ■ Relevancy rules. There are no “throw away” communications in the e-mail world, where consumers provide immediate and constant feedback about what they think of your programs to their ISPs. Before clicking send, always ask yourself, “Is the individual recipient I’m sending this to going to find it valuable?” And while you’re at it, “Would I be Jordan Cohen happy to receive this message.” Epsilon Jordan Cohen is director of industry and government relations at Epsilon. He can be reached at jcohen@epsilon.com. ESSENTIAL GUIDE Controlling messaging costs BY BARRY ABEL For every message that doesn’t make it to the intended inbox, the bottom line takes a direct hit. The number one reason why mail doesn’t get delivered is infrastructure. Infrastructure in the e-mail world means MTA (Message Transfer Agent) and is the way your company presents itself to the ISP community. But most companies’ sending infrastructures are not conducive to handling large volumes of outbound mail. Common sending architecture falls into two camps. The first is composed of open source solutions such as Sendmail, which requires dozens of servers to meet volume and speed requirements. The second includes early-to-market spam engines intended to send high volumes of mail, but without the control features required to secure delivery and a positive reputation. Neither approach is optimal. There are, however, several ways companies can optimize Barry Abel their infrastructure to reduce Message Systems costs and improve deliverability. ■ Improve infrastructure performance There is a tremendous cost to running servers, so if you can reduce the number you need to support, you automatically reduce costs. Adopting a solution that will allow each server to send millions of messages per hour with ability to maintain 100k concurrent connections, results in a 10:1 hardware reduction. ■ Insist on virtual IP support By adopting an infrastructure that supports virtual IPs — the ability to segment traffic by unlimited IP addresses on a server — you can optimize your throughput for each type of mail you send to each ISP. ■ Cluster servers This will allow you to configure, manage and support all servers from a single interface. ■ Establish bounce classifications and a list hygiene process This will decrease mailing costs, because you’ve eliminated bad addresses by setting up an automated way to handle bounced mail. ■ Obtain workflow and policy management capability Being able to set mail processing policies in advance saves admin time and processing power. Setting thresholds to alert admin of deliverability problems will help catch problems early so they can be corrected. ■ Prepare for authentication To prevent messages from being blocked by ISPs using authentication technology, establish a policy to mark e-mail with DKIM and Sender ID. ■ Adopt e-mail monitoring E-mail monitoring lets you know if your message landed in the inbox, a junk folder or was blocked by a spam catcher. Knowing this can give you a better chance of making changes that will get you to more inboxes. ■ Insist on real-time reporting With real-time analytics, adjustments can be made before sending subsequent campaigns. Barry Abel is vice president of field operations at Message Systems. He can be reached at barry.abel@messagesystems.com.

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